“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” U.S. v. Olmstead – Justice Brandeis

Posts Tagged ‘probation agents’

Forty years ago Nixon announced the now infamous “war on drugs” when he declared drug addiction “public enemy number one.” What an economic and social disaster! With costs exceeding $1 trillion, huge increase in prison populations due to tens of millions of arrests, millions imprisoned without rehabilitation, an evolution into a “prison nation” with a massive expansion of the prison-industrial complex, there has been no decrease in the use or abuse of illicit drugs. All we’ve done is make more addicts, better trained criminals, and a hugely increased number of family members on public assistance! How dumb is that? A recent study revealed that 83% of prisoners at Cook County jail, the largest jail in the country have positive drug tests upon arrest. States budgets are busted! Rural communities are now prison towns – not industrial, high-tech, or artistic centers running the engine of the economy with new industries.

What did Albert Einstein say? “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I guess its time to stop doing the same thing! Maybe we should think about:

rehabilitation in prison with intense mental health treatment if they commit violent crimes,

treating drug addiction as a disease instead of a crime,

putting addicts who committed non-violent crimes to work in community service projects so they can stay employed, save the tax payers dollars, and support their families while being supervised and treated for addiction at 1/4 the cost, in other words – creative and alternative sentencing

making specialized drug courts where judges are required to have specialized training before coming on the bench,

increasing qualifications needed to become a parole officer (one of the most difficult jobs on the planet if done right) so that there is training in psychology, drug addiction, mental illness, social services, and policing techniques including safe entry into a home with safety for the officers a high priority, as well as better gang intelligence on the streets,

saving taxpayer dollars by changing sentencing laws and down-sizing the prison industrial complex so we stop warehousing people while training them to be better criminals and instead treat their mental health and addictions without imprisonment, and

decriminalization and experiments in legal regulation of drugs (tax marijuana like we tax alcohol) as has worked well in Portugal and is being tried now in Mexico.

Now is the time to write your Senators and Congressmen as well as local legislators, speak up from the pulpit, recruit your local police chief to support these reforms, speak up at public meetings at all levels of government, and organize in your communities.

Not only is this the right time and place for a new civil rights movement that treats addictions as mental health issues, our economy can no longer afford to be a prison nation incarceration 7-40 times more members of our population than any civilized country. We have the same number of prisoners as China but a fifth the population.

Flood the Department of Justice phone lines with demands to decriminalize marijuana and for alternative sentencing and banning private prisons. Write Attorney General Eric Holder and demand he lead the charge for reform:

United States Attorney General Sessions
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

By Phone

Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line – 202-353-1555

e-mail me a message that you participated and tell me how you are organizing in your community for change at picepil@aol.com